On 9/6/2011 18:12, Rob Weir wrote:
Moving this point to its own thread
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 6:03 PM, drew<[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, 2011-09-06 at 17:30 -0400, TJ Frazier wrote:
On 9/6/2011 13:43, Matt Richards wrote:
Well, I thought Terry has resigned from the project according to another
thread, leaving the wiki migration at a bit of a stand still. Figured I
could step in and pick up where he left off on this. Am I able to, as a
non-contributor reach out to Apache Infra on this (from what I read it seems
the infra ML are for existing contributors only)? Not sure who all is
involved at this point.
As Pedro commented, you don't need a newbie to help with the conversion.
But in the long run, I volunteer to learn whatever is needed to support
the MW system. All I have to offer is that I am a sysop on the live
wiki,
<snip>
Another option to consider is that of content translation: MediaWiki
to Confluence. Remember. Confluence is fully supported by Apache
Infra. We would also find a lot of people on the list who could help
write and test wiki text conversion code. It is just string
manipulation, right? How hard can that be? Even I can help with
that.
But seriously, the MW plans were always precarious. We did not have a
deep bench of expertise on the sys admin side of that package. Even
if we have a volunteer or two step in now, aren't we still rather
thin? Wouldn't we still be one "life change" away from being back
where we are now? But if we can figure out a content-level migration
to Confluence wiki, then we would have something much more sustainable
long term.
Just an idea.
-Rob
My question is, "Is it worth looking at Confluence Wiki /at all?/ "
Q: Why does everybody use Cwiki?
A: Infra supports it.
Q: Why does Infra support Cwiki?
A: Everybody uses it.
Hmm. "Very interesting," as Arte Johnson used to say.
*Personal gripes.*
My biggest gripe with Cwiki is the help; the file is neither searchable
nor editable (do that in Mwiki to see how an example /really/ works); it
is also in need of some serious editing. (To be fair, I have not yet
explored their User Guide, but I will.) It is not clear to me that
Apache users are best served by Confluence.
*Conversion problems.*
Terry sized this as "man-years of effort". I agree.
Going the other way (Cwiki to Mwiki) should be, as Rob wrote, "just
string manipulation", because MW is richer in features than CW, so a
good translation possibility exists. It may not exist in reverse.
One big snag is the MW templates, which are used for everything from
copyright attribution to inter-page tables of contents. Given that the
output of any MW artifact is displayable HTML, it is /possible/ to
convert to a CW page that looks exactly like the MW page. However,
offering the functionality of being able to add a line to a TOC
template, and have everything else happen automatically ... that's hard.
(Please note that 'possible' != 'reasonable'.)
Then there are smaller things, like sortable tables (on all columns,
too!). In MW, that's 'class = "prettytable"' -> 'class = "prettytable
sortable"'; just add the one word. <snide> Can CW do it at all? </snide>
The <math> ... </math> feature is of some use in explaining the more
abstruse Calc functions (in FAQ pages). The major user is the Math
Guide's wiki version. (I maintain that document.) Not really an
essential element, but nice.
I have little doubt that a serious conversion survey will turn up a
number of such problems.
*Migration problems.*
There are some technical problems with the migration (that is, running
MW at Apache); most of those appear to have short- and long-term
solutions. I will save the details for a more technical thread, and/or
the wiki.
--
/tj/
